Google Ads (Adwords) - Working with Agencies and Postback Partners

Introduction

Advertisers can allow agencies to run campaigns on their behalf using the Google Ads integration.

Both advertisers and agencies must actively configure the system. The video below shows the steps required by both the advertiser and agency to enable the agency to track mobile traffic to the advertisers app using Google Ads.

The configuration enables AppsFlyer to attribute conversions to an agency from within the AppsFlyer dashboard.

Before the Agency can begin the process, the Advertiser must first configure the Google Ads integration. For details, click here.

Enabling Agencies Tracking of Google Ads

AppsFlyer supports agency configurations with Google Ads. It is essential that the advertiser and the agency have separate Google Ads accounts to enable AppsFlyer to correctly attribute the data.

Setting-Up Google Ads Tracking for Agencies

To start agency tracking of Google Ads campaigns with AppsFlyer, follow these steps:

Watch

Read

Advertiser Pre-Step: Sharing the Link ID with the Agency and Agency Permissions

The advertiser must grant the agency access to the app by following the instructions detailed here.

1. Go to your Google Ads Dashboard and click the Tools icon

2. Select Linked Accounts.

3. Under App Analytics Provider, find AppsFlyer and Select Options.

4. Click Share with Another Account.

5. Insert the new Agency’s Google Ads Customer ID

6. Click Next >> Send Invite

The advertiser can now see that the invitation request has been sent to the Agency. When the Agency accepts the invite, the status changes to Sharing.

The View-Through recommended is 1 day, to match the Google Ads value. The scale allows you to customize the number of hours/days after an ad is viewed, during which the impression can be attributed to this partner.

Click Save & Close.

An Agency can set up multiple Google Ads Customer IDs, if required.

Agency Step 3: Mapping Your In-App Events

1. Click the In-App Events tab.

2. Select to either send In-App Events from Only Google Ads Installs or from All In-App Events to Google Ads.

3. Map all In-App Events you want to send to Google Ads, with the pre-defined Google Ads events.4. Click Save.

Important!

Import the first-open and in-app actions to Google Ads to begin counting conversions in both Google Ads and your AppsFlyer dashboard.

To be able to import, you must launch the app and perform your mapped in-app events at least once.

Note

It may take up to 6 hours until the new conversions change status from No Recent Conversion to Recording Conversion.

If an agency works with an MCC account and the app is promoted via several MCC sub-accounts all sub-accounts must be configured in the Google Ads Customer ID field (as seen on above screen shot). In such a case there is no need to configure the customer id of the MCC account.

Agency Step 4: Tracking Your App Conversions

1. Return to your Google Ads account and click the Tools icon.

2. Under the Measurement section, click Conversions.

3. Click the + icon.4. Select App from the list of conversion types.

5. Select Third Party App Analytics.

6. Click Continue.

7. Check the box next to first_open ALL your apps and for each event you want to import.

8. Click Import and Continue

9. Click Done. You can now see your third-party conversion event in the Conversion Actions table.

Click the name of the event to see more details.

Congratulations! You have now completed the agency setup for tracking Google Ads mobile installs on AppsFlyer.

Agencies: Collecting Cost, Clicks and Impression Data

Agencies can retrieve cost data from Google Ads, which also includes the clicks and impressions data.

Doing so displays the cost data on both the agency and advertiser dashboards, at the campaign level.

Google Ads Postback Partners

Some partners (e.g., Bidalgo, Adquant), referred to as Google Ads Postback Partners, are similar to agencies. They help their advertiser clients run Google Ads campaigns, but require getting postbacks for Google Ads conversions.

These Google Ads Postback Partners (GAPPs) can also collect postbacks for Google Ads installs acquired by the advertiser directly, or even by other agencies (see Use Cases below). Using the postbacks information the GAPPs are able to optimize on Google Ads campaigns for the app.

Important!

Google Ads Postback Partners are NOT attributed with installs or events on AppsFlyer.

The advertiser needs an active Google Ads account set up on AppsFlyer, and also to set up the specific GAPP on AppsFlyer to enable sending postbacks to it.

Google Ads Postback Partner Setup

1. Click Integrated Partners from the left sidebar

2. Enter the name of the GAPP you would like to work with in the search box and click the logo.

Tip

Enter "Google Ads" in the integrated partners field to receive the list of GAPPs.

3. Click on the required GAPP to open its unique configuration window (which contains only the Integration tab):

4. From your Google Ads account, copy the Customer ID (without hyphens) from the top left-hand corner and paste it to the AppsFlyer Ads Customer ID parameter as shown in the screenshots below.

Notice that these must be different CIDs between the advertiser & agency.

Available Parameters for GAPPs

The contents of the postbacks depend on the initial integration of the GAPPs with AppsFlyer, and are unrelated to any advertiser configuration. Therefore, any two GAPPs may have differently defined postback parameters.

For example, campaign type, city, carrier and ad_type are parameters, which may or may not exist in any GAPP's postback.

There are two sources for GAPP postback parameters:

AppsFlyer macros - for details of all the macros available on AppsFlyer's postbacks, click here.

Google Response - with every install attributed to Google Ads, AppsFlyer receives relevant information from Google. The following are available parameters on GAPPs postbacks, as received by AppsFlyer from Google Ads (for detailed parameter descriptions, click here)

Ad Events ID

Campaign ID

Campaign Name

Campaign Type

External Customer ID (CID)

Network Type

Network Sub Type

Timestamp

Video ID

Ad Group ID

Creative ID

Keyword

Match Type

Placement

Ad Type

Interaction Type

Conversion Metric

Location

Note

The information available is based solely on the information sent by Google to AppsFlyer. If, for some reason, Google does not send an install's information, AppsFlyer can't pass it on to the GAPP.